Friday, January 22

This being our second and final Friday on the trip, our day was pretty much centred on the mosque and Jummah. As such we managed to start the day relatively early, the idea being to mop up the remaining sights, pray and then head out of the city. Santa Monica was the main highlight where we checked out the pier, biked (myself on a tricycle, naturally) to Venice Beach where we checked out the canals, posed on Muscle Beach and generally horsed around till it was time to go.

Maybe it was the weather but I have to say that Santa Monica and it's surroundings aren't as glitzy as they might appear on the television. Oh for sure, it seemed like a wonderful place to hang out and possibly even live... but there was also something a little underwhelming about the whole place. We got our fill, and then headed to the King Fahad Mosque in Culver City to both offer our Jummah and meet one of my uncles for lunch.

After a hefty haul of pizza it was finally time to head out of LA. Unsurprisingly we were behind on schedule - we actually left the city at 4:30pm - but I suspect none of us had any expectations of any schedules by that point. As such, we decided to randomly stop at a cute little beach cafe in Malibu for an unwarranted amount of dessert and milkshakes before finally arriving at what became our final destination of the day, Ventura.

To be clear this was not part of the plan; heck I hadn't even heard of Ventura before arriving here today (my first thought was to try Santa Barbara). This, again, turned out to be a bit of a gem as we followed some suggested advice and caught the second half of a comedy gig being played not too far from our hotel.

It was a great way to end the day, and indeed mark our departure of SoCal. Our road trip along the Pacific Coast Highway had begun.